Archive for category Hunting with Basset Hounds

Photo Essay: Ashland Bassets (October 10, 2010)

The photo essay is posted at KLM Images.

Pack photos

Multi-headed pack

This was the opening meet for the season, so everyone was well dressed for the occasion and the sporting parson was on hand for the blessing of the hounds.  This year is also the 50th anniversary of the Ashland Bassets, so it was a day of special celebrations.

You can get hunting action anytime but these dress-up occasions are ideal for pack photos, and on this day the weather and circumstances combined to throw up dozens of pack photo opportunities.

Formal pack shots with staff are useful all year round (for newsletters, calendars, etc.), but the informal ones are not to be scorned.  See how the basset with one blue eye peers through the circle set by two other hounds’ tails.  Not easy to tell where one hound begins and the next one ends. Read the rest of this entry »

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Photo Essay: Ashland Bassets (October 3, 2010)

The photo essay is posted at KLM Images.

Hounds at work

The most thrilling shots are those showing the hounds at work, and ideally their prey, too.  As the cubbing season draws to a close, that can mean tall autumn grasses and hidden action.  But it also means the subtle autumn colors and the last of the flowers.


Death from above, she hopes

Basset hounds sometimes seem to understand that they have short legs and seek high ground for advantage.

This particular hound is a photographic favorite of mine.  Before I knew her name (Jesse) I was calling her Autofocus because my camera found it so easy to focus on her.  Usually a hound is small and lost in a large background scene like this, but her coloring is so vivid as she stands on the Great Meadow course jump that the scene works. Read the rest of this entry »

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Photo Essay: Ashland Bassets (April 16, 2010)

The photo essay is posted at KLM Images.

Complicated events

Waiting for another hunt to finish

This is a just-published essay from an event of a few months ago.  There is a 4-day pack trial of basset hounds where several hunts come and compete in various pack formations (3-couple, 5-couple, 7-couple) actively hunting rabbits and being judged for hunting effectiveness.  This particular essay is the second day, with the 3-couple (6 hounds) competition.  Day 1 is published here; days 3 & 4 will be available here & here.

At any time during the course of the day, there may be one pack just finishing hunting and exiting the hunting area, one pack beginning to hunt, another pack waiting its turn, and yet another pack out taking some exercise.  The participants largely know each other and have done this for many seasons, so they are not confused by the activities, but a photo essay sampling all the activities in order can’t help but be bewildering to less knowledgeable viewers compared to, say, a foxhunt.

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